baby rambutan

so this popular ice cream brand has been featuring in its commercials, peach ice cream.

that this ice cream has only all natural ingredients.

that this ice cream is so good you’ll have to have some.

and of course, the idea was mind boggling. fresh peaches! cream! sugar!

so off i went looking.

and there was none to be found.

yup we tried, all the stores within reasonable driving distance (this, despite the escalating gas prices! we were compelled), and the company seems so unreachable(no 800 number to call, no “contact us” button on the webpage).

exasperating? sure, so i tried to make some.

end product: tasted too much like custard. it must have been the…cheating. yes i confess i didn’t follow instructions. instead of using fresh peaches–blanched, peeled, pitted, sliced, and THEN macerated with sugar, for 8 HOURS!– i used canned slices in heavy syrup.

oh well, next time i’ll be more obedient. anyway the in-house ice cream aficionados are eating it up.

with a carb-y and a fruity salad!

a pound of farfalle, a pound of asparagus, a pint of grape tomatoes, a cup and a half of crumbled feta, a bunch of mint(they’re taking over the garden!)…dressed with balsamic vinegar and olive oil.
bowtie pasta salad,recipe from the Boston Globe Food section, July 2, 2008.

buko (young coconut) fruit salad…i would love to dive in and drown in it! a packet of frozen shredded young coconut, 2 cans of fruit cocktail, nata de coco (coconut gel) and kaong (palm fruit), a-swim in a softened-cream cheese/condensed milk/heavy cream concoction.
in a fit of self-righteouslness i did not devour it… i dove into the YMCA swimming pool instead.

just perfect for this heatwave we’re in .

the campfire treat in a cheesecake!
this flavor combination of milk chocolate, graham cracker, and toasted marshmallow is so famous and beloved, did you know that it has its own National Holiday? yeah, August 10 or 11, depending on whom you ask.

the invention is attributed to girl scouts, and it has spawned the creation of S’mores flavors in ice cream, granola bars, chocolate bars…and now cheesecake.
this is from the latest issue of bon appetit.

i must confess, i only used up half of the marshmallow topping, since i found it quite deadly, cloyingly, toothachey sweet. if you can afford the sugar, go ahead and use it all up on top, then broil away, with a blow torch, or watching over carefully, with the broiler function of your stove.

notwithstanding my making this cheesecake,
my pyromaniacs still went ahead and made s’mores the classical way:

light up a big roaring bonfire.

melt a marshmallow on a long maple twig that you foraged for yourself from the back yard.

sandwich between two graham crackers with a piece of chocolate bar wedged in between…
open wide, bite, then say “yummmm!”

French toast (eggy bread, pain perdu, pain dore) was invented as a way to recycle old bread.
any old stale dried up loaf will do. but for me brioche is IT.

so it is logical and understandable that an obsessive compulsive foodie will bake brioche just specifically to make it stale and old in order to make French toast.

except my last brioche loaf did not make it past its prime, nay! it didn’t last the evening it was baked. i have to make another one pronto. and then hide it.

here’s the recipe for bread machine brioche. …and take my word for it. French toast must be brioche-d. Brioche must be French toast’d.

the order of placement depends upon your machine.

1 & 1/2 tsps. active dry yeast
2 tbsps. sugar
3 cups bread flour
3/4 tsp. salt
3 large eggs, beaten
1/3 cup lukewarm whole milk (80F)
3 tbsps. lukewarm water

1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature

set machine menu to “sweet bread” setting, crust setting should be light.
put everything in the bread pan except for the butter. press start then let machine mix the dough for about 5 minutes then add the butter in portions, letting the machine work before adding the next bit.

THAT’s IT!

for the French toast: eggs, milk, sugar, cinnamon/nutmeg/cardamom to taste. soak brioche and then cook in a shallow pan with melted butter. brown both sides.

the first day of summer… or is it?
it sure doesn’t feel like it. we still haven’t packed away our down comforters, nor switched from flannel sheets to cotton.
but school’s out! and at least the flowers–peonies, rhododendrons, roses!!!, my honeysuckles– are blooming…and there is the occasional sunlight peeping out from between the thick dark clouds.

we just went to see Kung Fu Panda. wow. all i can say is, check out the “moonlight on panda fur.” and the battle for the dumplings! i would love to see that movie again and again just for my eyes to linger on the artistry of its animation and illustrations.

on the down side, our hot water tank broke, is dripping all over the dungeon, and i have to teach my children Pinoy style of dip and pour “showers”.

on the up side, my oven’s fixed! yippeee! as the first thing for me to bake, my kids were of the same mind: banana something with chocolate.

i decided to make “banana nut cake” from my old Betty Crocker cookbook. it was a huge pan, 13″ by 9″, but i was too slow with the camera, and my children too quick to devour:

this was all that’s left when i finally remembered:

this girl’s gotta bake. that’s what i told husband, twenty years ago, very early in our marriage. as if he could return or exchange his new bride if he dared disagree!

it’s just something i have to do, the same way other people have to jog or run (yes you! you know who you are! ), or weed gardens.
so what was i supposed to do with the oven dead and the errant part nowhere in sight?

i baked loaf after loaf of bread, with my “R2D2″ dak bread machine. i hid away the leftover heels and tops of orange cream bread, french, brioche (the best for bread pudding), oatmeal honey, white. you name it, i baked it. er R2D2 baked it.

so i could make: bread pudding! after all, bread pudding is steamed ya?
(more…)

yeah good question.
there’s just not enough hours in the day.
i pause to catch my breath. i stare at this photo of us in the year two-thousand-kopong kopong ….
that’s the blue ribbon cake

i keep on cooking of course.
just not blogging.
in return, i get to have a “cleaner” house and my garden is starting to get spruced up just a bit.
for mother’s day my kids planted a honeysuckle vine (we want to test if we’ll attract some more butterflies or even fireflies! hummingbirds?!) and herbs to replenish those that didn’t make it through the winter.

meanwhile on the day i set out to make the famous Baltimore Berger cookies my oven died which is quite ironic since it was the day i was determined to blog again. could this be a seismic cosmic message? a wakey-wakey smell-the-coffee, quit-the-bloggy moment?
hmmmm.

we’d been using our oven to warm up our home on this cold and depressing month of May (it’s supposed to be warm now for heaven’s sake!!!). it gave up the ghost and i ended up baking these in the toaster oven, tedious and time-consuming but i didn’t want to have to 1) knock on neighbors’ doors to see who’d let me bake in their oven and use up their fuel or 2)toss out the butter-rich cookie-cake dough and have nightmares about the starving children all over the world…

i opted for the teeny toaster oven.

after all i badly needed some distraction. i saw these Baltimore Berger cookies featured in a recent issue of Saveur. my chocolate seized up and turned gritty in the process of whipping, per instructions, so obviously needs a bit more practice and/or tweaking. the cakey-cookie is divine though.

cakey vanilla cookie with an overdose of dark chocolate fudgey icing. my kids requested a sweeter milk chocolate for next time. (it was too intense even for the chocoholic kids).

try your luck with the cookbook raffle!!!

i consider these to be a “mestiza” tart of the Eurasian variety…sweetened flaked coconut+almond paste+cherry-pie-type-filling on a butterlicious shortbread crust.
somehow it works!

measuring things out always de-stresses me somehow, and with the rainy gloomy day outside and two boisterous boys (#2son and a favorite pal) playing inside…it was calming and relaxing to make these bars.

the recipe is at my favorite almond paste headquarters.

the young man. #1son, requested Beef Wellington for his birthday, April 14. his 19th birthday!

Gordon Ramsay’s recipe from bbcGoodFood.com, calls for wrapping the seared beef tenderloin in slices of prosciutto instead of crepes. i didn’t feel like adding on more carbs to the pastry, i added more fat instead.
complete recipe here.

and he requested Schwarzwalder torte but i didn’t have enough time nor nuts (almonds, hazelnuts) so instead i bought what i thought would be a close approximation, a hazelnut orange torte from the Whole Foods bake “shoppe”–
a gamble i lost. the “sales associate,” i discovered when i got home, had dented the top of the ganache frosting in a most unsightly place. uggh. i thought a Whole Foods item was bound to be good. it tasted really bland and nothing like hazelnuts at all… and so i ended up quickly baking a ten-inch double chocolate layer cake with a rich ganache frosting.

and everything turned out okay naman….anything to make the birthday boy happy on his 19th celebration! wow, he’s 19….

ang ganda ng salitang tatsulok…pinaigsing tatlong sulok. hindi nga naman puwedeng trianggulo dahil bukod sa Kastila yon, paputok pa sa Bagong Taon.

this is my entry for Litratong Pinoy 2, with “triangle” as its theme.

ta’s yung isa nanganak…
which is the regular size? is there a jumbo or a mini?